Your Right to Know

A proposal for rental registration and fees in Newark is pitting landlords against those who
want to crack down on negligent property owners and poor housing conditions.

The idea was floated by an ad hoc committee created by the city council and composed of
residents and landlords at last week’s economic-development meeting.

“Does a city give everyone tickets because of a few speeders?” asked Tim Bailey, a property
owner and a member of the committee who opposed the idea. “You can’t bad-mouth all landlords.”

The proposal would require all rental property to be registered. Owners would have to pay $20 a
year per unit. Inspections of the property would be complaint-driven and cost $40 for each
violation. Those who don’t register would face fines starting at $100.

The money from the registration fees, which would generate roughly $173,000 a year from 8,647
units, would pay for the enforcement.

Newark’s rental rate is the highest in Licking County and one of the highest in central Ohio,
making up roughly 44 percent of its occupied homes.

“Poor housing conditions affect everybody, not just renters,” said David Greene, a resident and
a committee member who supports the idea. “This isn’t aimed at punishing anybody. We just want to
raise the bar.”

This sort of legislation is not common in central Ohio. Columbus and Whitehall, which have
higher rental rates than Newark with 53 and 58 percent of homes, respectively, do not charge
landlords fees for their rental units. However, Whitehall does require them to register addresses
and names of tenants.

In Franklin County, landlords are required to register their properties with the county
auditor.

The idea has been controversial in other cities, such as Middletown in Butler County, where
officials abandoned it after protests from landlords.

It has been more successful in northern Ohio cities, such as Sandusky, Akron and Youngstown,
where committee members got most of the ideas for its proposal.

Newark Councilwoman Carol Floyd said she is leaning toward the idea but is also open to tweaking
it.

“I see this from a person who has rental property on all sides of my house,” she said. “
Unfortunately, it’s a situation where most people who own rental property take care of it, but
there are enough who don’t that we need to be concerned with this.”

Bailey and his son own about 130 rental units in the city. He said if he has tenants who have
lived there for more than two decades, “I must be doing something right.”

At $20 each, they’d pay about around $2,600 a year.

“It’s not about the money,” Bailey said. “It’s about another level of government. Why would you
make good landlords pay any sort of a fee, even if it’s 5 cents?”

The proposal will be discussed again at the next economic-development committee meeting at 5:30 p
.m. next Monday in City Hall.